


Child of Moonlight and Alchemy

by PaperandInk



Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canonical Character Death, Child Neglect, moon varian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:55:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26667061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperandInk/pseuds/PaperandInk
Summary: The Moonstone was holding Quirin hostage even after leaving the Dark Kingdom and the Brotherhood behind. It destroyed his life in every sense of the word and refused to let him go. He never expected it to give him something in return.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 89





	Child of Moonlight and Alchemy

**Haunted**

Quirin felt haunted. As more black rocks cropped up, their spikes taking homes and lives, it left him and the brotherhood at a loss as to how to stop it. Then there was their king, falling prey to the opal’s madness. Quirin was haunted by the shadow of sanity their king had lost, haunted by ghosts of those who were impaled in their sleep, those who were sealed in by the rock surrounding them, those that were done in by the grief of losing everything they’d known to these rocks that could not be reasoned with.

Adira took it upon herself to start looking into more mythic ways to combat them while Hector seemed to be falling into a madness all his own. Quirin preferred the more practical solution of moving their people toward the outskirts of their kingdom, away from the rocks.

But what Quirin had not foreseen was being haunted by the ghost of his sister. She had tried to take the opal herself in an attempt at her own solution. It was an effort to save her husband and her son from its fate. He had tried to warn Edmund of the Queen’s plan but they were too late.

Sometimes Quirin heard her voice in his dreams, calling to him.

“Brother,” she said in a faraway voice as he tossed and turned one night. “Brother, go to the opal. Brother, it needs you.”

Quirin awoke in a cold sweat. “Lorelei.”

Quirin didn’t bother with his armor. The voice instilled in him a sense of urgency. It drove him to do nothing more than pull on a pair of trousers and grab his sword.

He stumbled from his room and made his way to the Moonstone’s chamber. The guards at the doors were easily disarmed and knocked unconscious.

“Brother,” he heard call from inside the chamber.

Quirin burst through the doors. The opal had shed its protective shell of black rock and floated upwards. Then Lorelei was there. She stood behind the opal, looking down on it with adoration.

“Isn’t it beautiful, brother?”

“Yes.” He didn’t know why he’d agreed. It wasn’t beautiful to him. To him it was dangerous and horrid. He wished that the moon had never produced that opal. It brought nothing but destruction and decay.

But then Lorelei looked at him with tears in her eyes. They spilled over and ran down her cheeks.

On instinct, Quirin rushed forward. He crossed the bridge but stopped at the middle because Lorelei was suddenly there to meet him. He wiped away her tears with the side of his finger. They collected there and solidified into a smaller version of the moon opal.

“What is this?” There was something sinister about its gleam.

“You must keep it,” she told him. “There will come such a time that you will need it. Until then, hold it close to your heart.”

Quirin blinked and she was gone. With trembling hands, he put the smaller opal in his pocket. The next day, Edmund ordered that the kingdom evacuate.

**Nature**

When Quirin came to Corona, he had decided he was done with the Brotherhood. He wanted no more part in something that had consumed his whole life and left with nothing but heartache. He wanted a new start.

Helaine swept into his life like a whirlwind. It was effortless for her. All it took was a smile and he melted. She was a brilliant alchemist who helped her village in any way she could. Everyone came to her for help.

Watching her work was like watching someone create art. She delved into her own world when she pulled on her goggles. She deftly measured, poured, examined, adjusted temperatures, all in fluid movements that were second nature to her. It was beautiful. _She_ was beautiful.

One day it was a salve for the Widow Cooper’s joint pain. Another day it was adjusting the components of the soil to make it more fertile. And the next day it was building a system to warn them if a pack of wolves was coming too close to the village. Helaine’s work was never done and she liked it that way.

Then Queen Arianna became ill and the king sent out a search for the Sundrop to save her. Quirin pulled on his old Brotherhood armor and went to warn him not to use it. The black rocks would seek out the magic of the Sundrop and endanger Corona. But the stubborn king wouldn’t listen.

Quirin went home and told Helaine everything about his past. Up until that point he had been as vague as he could be to keep the burden of what he knew from her. It finally boiled over and he told her whatever he knew of the Moonstone and Sundrop.

Then he showed her the shard of Moonstone that the vision of his sister had given him. He had put it on a chain and wore it around his neck to keep it close to him at all times. _Keep it close to your heart._

“I fear what will come now that King Frederic is toying with forces he doesn’t understand,” he said as he undid the clasp and handed her the necklace to examine.

Helaine held up the chain and took in the smaller Moonstone that was encased in its own miniature shell the same as the one in the Dark Kingdom. “This is fascinating,” she said, voice full of awe. “If I could just study the-”

Quirin snatched it back, feeling that he had just made a terrible mistake. Of course, his wife, ever the curious scientist, would be enthralled by something so otherworldly. The hurt that flashed through her eyes, made him want to soften his reaction. “I’m sorry, Helaine. But its dangerous. It killed my sister and drove her husband to madness. It destroyed my home.”

“If it’s caused so much harm, then why do you keep it?” She took his hand and held it securely in her own. The comfort Quirin got from the simple gesture was immeasurable.

“I know that the vision I saw wasn’t really my sister, but whether it was good, evil, or something else, it gave this to me. She said that this would be important and I believe her. This stone is my responsibility now.”

Quirin regretted ever telling Helaine about his piece of the stone.

It was too late by the time he found out she too had visions from the Moonstone. It showed her how to use magic and alchemy to get something they’d both so desired.

Helaine replaced his piece of the opal with a fake one she’d created and got to work. Using a sample of her hair, his hair, the Moonstone and a few other ingredients that took her a month and a couple of trips out of town to collect, she was able to do it. Quirin came home one day to find her holding a sleeping baby who looked so much like her but with a streak of blue hair standing out against the dark brown of the rest of it.

“What have you done?” Quirin demanded.

“We have the child we always wanted,” she insisted with a smile.

He ripped off the fake Moonstone and held it up. “You lied to me.” He threw it to the ground and stepped on it. “How could you do this? How could you make that thing?”

“This thing is our child!” she argued. “The opal showed me that I could use it to make something so wonderful. It was a gift.”

“No! Helaine, don’t you see that it tricked you? Now we have an attachment to it. If there was ever a need to destroy it-”

“Don’t, Quirin.” Her voice trembled with desperation that sent him internally reeling.

“This is what it wanted.”

Something broke between them that day. But as the baby grew, that broken piece was patched over. It was left weak but they managed to work around it. The child slowly worked his way into Quirin’s heart. He regretted the child’s origin but couldn’t help the fondness he began to feel.

They lied to the village and told them that they found the child left nearby, on the outskirts of the forest. There were rumors and questions that slowly died out over the years.

The boy fell just as deeply in love with science and alchemy as Helaine. Though Quirin was happy to see that he did have an appreciation for farming too.

But as much joy as the boy brought them, Quirin felt like he was holding his breath, waiting for the payment that would come for such a crime against nature. He refused to even let his guard down enough to call the child his son. The Moonstone wasn’t a kind and benevolent creature. It wasn’t going to give them something so beautiful as a child without a sacrifice.

**Nurture**

Then Helaine fell ill. It was something no doctor could explain. She slowly deteriorated before their eyes, over the course of three months. Quirin and the boy sat by her side, comforting her as best as they could.

After she was gone, Quirin couldn’t bear to look at the child. That was the cost. Helaine made them a child by using something as volatile as the Moonstone and it killed her.

Watching her die only reminded Quirin that the moonstone had tricked Helaine into it to gain a form as sympathetic as a child. He wouldn’t fall for it.

A week past that he ignored it. But the continuous, “Daddy, what’s wrong?” and “Daddy, did I do something bad?” and “Daddy, please talk to me!”, were close to breaking him. He couldn’t kill it, that much was clear to him. But if the Moonstone wanted him to keep it close, then maybe he needed to get it as far away from him as possible.

He packed up a cart and the boy, then drove to the capital. Quirin walked him all over town, trying to figure out what to do. Everyone was kind enough, someone would care for him, wouldn’t they? Or maybe he needed to go further. The boy may be able to tell them how to get him back home.

As Quirin pondered this, he didn’t even notice the boy wander off. Once he looked around for him, the boy was nowhere in sight. He should have felt relief but all that washed over him was dread and fear.

Quirin got the attention of a man selling flowers from a cart. “Sir, my son wandered off. Have you seen him? He’s only five-years-old. He has brown hair with a blue streak in it.”

He ran around asking everyone he saw if they’d seen his son. It wasn’t until he was asking the fifth person that he realized he’d been calling the boy his son.

When someone was finally able to show him into a shop where an old lady had been keeping an eye on the boy, he was overwhelmed with relief. The boy was licking a lollipop seemingly unaffected by the ordeal.

Tears stung Quirin’s eyes as he kneeled down to hug him. “I am so sorry, Varian.”

Quirin pulled away when he realized Varian wasn’t hugging him back. Varian looked up at him with a confused expression that slowly shifted into a distraught one.

“Why were you mad at me?”

“I wasn’t mad.” Was that a lie? He didn’t know how to explain something like this to a child. “There is no excuse for how I treated you. I made a mistake.” Too many mistakes. “I hope that you can forgive me.”

Varian nodded fervently and hugged him, dropping his lollipop in the process.

**Truth**

The black rocks encroached on Corona, leaving Quirin at a loss. Varian had been his child for a little over fourteen years and there was no way he was going to risk losing his son. The Moonstone perfectly entwined itself into his life and there was no going back. He had accepted the fact that he would do anything to protect Varian.

So, he pretended that the rocks were not a problem. He avoided them and downplayed them until he couldn’t any longer. Then he went to lengths to move their whole village just to protect his son.

But Varian didn’t understand. How could he? He didn’t know the horrible truth about what he was. He didn’t know that he was the same as the thing causing all of the destruction they were seeing. He could never know.

Maybe it was in Varian’s nature to be drawn to the rocks. Maybe he couldn’t help but go against Quirin’s orders to stay away from them. Either way he experimented on them in defiance of Quirin’s words.

As Varian ran to go get help Quirin knew he couldn’t let his son go on not knowing. With there being no solution in sight, Varian needed to know what he truly was. He silently begged Varian to return so he could tell him before being entombed in the amber growing up from the rock.

When the table was pushed near him along with the paper and quill, he got to work. He quickly wrote down the explanation of only the necessary information. It was blunt and lacked any comfort or emotion. Quirin didn’t have the time to include reassurances and gentle words.

Could he really leave Varian with nothing but the cold, harsh truth?

At the very bottom, Quirin quickly jotted in. _I’m proud of you, son. I always have been._


End file.
